Here's Nintendo's Latest Attempt at a Free-to-Play Game

IF YOU PAY FOR IT

IT IS NOT FREE !

It's not a free to play game, it's free to try, the intention wasn't actually giving half of it for free then asking you to pay the rest, the free half is a demo so you can make sure you like the style and then spend $9.99 to buy 250 levels at once, which means 4 worlds ($3-5 individually).

This is far better than putting a game for $20 and that's it, **** you if you buy and regret later. That's a damn fair business model.

Nintendo just keeps rushing into mistakes...

Still haven't spent a dime on Shuffle or Rumble, despite having played them for months.

Pay 2 Win is not synonymous with Free 2 Play, that's why they have separate titles.

There are "nickle & dime" games out there that cost $60 with a hoard of pricey expansion packs, $15 monthly fees, & cash shops (looking at you, World of Warcraft) & then there's the truely free MMOs that don't hold back any content & keep only mild XP boosters, fancy mounts, & costumes in their cash shops.

Nintendo isn't making MMOs (though people have been screaming for a Pokemon MMO for years), but they haven't taken the greedy corporate rout.

Free to play is for suckers.

Just take your money and throw it in the toilet while someone dangles keys in front of your face; same experience.

The Future of Nintendo is here and it looks sickening. Seriously i don't care if it is free to start or a demo or w/e having to buy different packs instead of just one price to unlock the full game is sickening.

Just imagine how much $$$ you can make Nintendo, by selling new DLC for Mario. New world packs, characters, outfits. $20 for x10 extra lives, $5 for 100 coins etc Join in on the money making machine and screw your customers over. Stop treating your customers so well with optimized games running smooth and very little dlc.

- A very very depressed XbO,PS4 and PC gamer

its a good puzzle game i support this

Alright, it's been pointed out by enough people that, Eddie, you have to feel dishonest in calling it free-to-play. I'm having that feeling I get when an Eddie article has a misleading headline.

Not free to play of you lock levels behind a paywall.

If you could earn those levels without paying then it is free to play.

Ooo ooo, it's almost like it's a DEMO!?!?!?! *cough*

Glad my kids are over the DS phase. Bad enough I have them bugging me for crap games for their phones. Also, since when is free-to-play limited to just the first few levels of the game? isn't that free-to-start?

i don't mind this system. they give you a decent chunk of the game to try out and see if you want more, then you can buy more chunks to play until you're satisfied. all those music games should've adopted a similar system before they died out. maybe now they'll do it.

So it's only free to play with seven levels...and if you want to keep playing, you gotta shell out the dough.

I'm not entirely sure what's "free to play" about it. It certainly fits their mantra of "free to start" however. I wouldn't label it as "free to play" if Nintendo themselves don't label it that way, because this certainly doesn't fit the trappings of that kind of game. This is what looks like a full game with most of it locked behind various pay walls, or if you want to be more realistic, it's a game demo and the full game wrapped up in one application/game.

I kind of like that concept to be honest. It doesn't work for games that are enormous in file size because you'll end up wasting a whole lot of bandwidth and time spent downloading the thing for ultimately nothing if you didn't like the demo, but for smaller games, it'll probably work a hell of a lot better than offering two separate downloads. It also works as a way of giving people options to pay for what they want. There are more options than just "demo or full".

Sooo... it's a $10 game with a free unique demo, plus you have the option to only pay for the parts you want?

I find it dishonest to call it free to play. You don't pay for "play coins" that can be spent in-game, or other similar tropes of FTP. It's "free to play" the same way Bravely Default has a free unique demo and is thus free-to-play. I'd call it an episodic game that is released on full, plus a free unique demo.

Not nearly as bad as everyone else.

This isn't free to play: they aren't charging $100 for something you can get in game.

no

Seems like a fair model to me. Try it extensively for free. Like it? By it in sections or the rest all at once.

Sounds more like a demo than free-to-play.

Free-to-play implies microtransactions for the entire run of the game (Clash of Clans, FF Record Keeper, etc).

$9.99 for all the packs. Well that's a fair price.

Anyone remember Rusty's real deal baseball? That was a very neat attempt at free to start.

If you don't have a Wii U then you aren't a gamer.

The beginning of the end.